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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: The Great Exhibition opened, London (1-5-1851)
Date: Thu, 2 May 2024 09:36:21 +1200
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"Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations" -- the first 
of the great World's Fairs of the 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition

The Crystal Palace, the vast central building of the Exhibition, had a 
complex after-life. It was rebuilt (rather differently) in a different 
location, and survived as a kind of Events Centre until destroyed by 
fire in 1936.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Palace

Meanwhile, Crystal (no relation) is most interested in the _Official 
Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue_ of the Exhibition, a massive 
1400-page inventory of the modern world's productions. "Dozens of new 
formations are listed....The Catalogue sometimes provides the first 
recorded use of an item..." (a reference to OED). His first-use examples 
are:
	sulphurator "An apparatus for sprinkling plants with flowers of sulfur, 
fumigating with sulfur, or the like."
	Tahiti cane "The sugar cane, Saccharum officinarum."

More interestingly, one of the new industrial wonders of the Exhibition 
was--- pay toilets! Designed by George Jennings, and apparently referred 
to colloquially as "monkey closets", they cost one penny to use. Whence 
the expression "spend a penny", which survived longer than the Crystal 
Palace.

Oh yes, it was also May Day, with all that that entails. Since Tennyson 
is in the air (at least on a.u.e.) let's recall:

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow ’ll be the happiest time of all the glad new-year,—
Of all the glad new-year, mother, the maddest, merriest day;
For I ’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I ’m to be Queen o’ the May.